Refreshingly free of jargon and the abstruse mathematical equations that characterize so many works of a speculative nature, this insightful study utilizes masterworks of twentieth-century music as the bases for discussion and analysis.

Analytic Approaches is organized into four units. The first focuses on aspects of musical structure other than pitch, such as rhythm, texture, timbre, form, and relationship of tonal music to the musics of our time. Units 2 and 3 deal with pitch structure: Unit 2 with pitch-class sets and Units 3 with serial music. Unit 4 contains a survey of music of the most recent generation.

The author admits freely that the perception of a work of art is a personal matter. In this book, he does not pretend to teach "the" way to listen to or to analyze contemporary music. Rather, he seeks to lead the reader to more informed listening through an understanding of how musical materials are used achieve both sonic and expressive effects.

Notation in Johannes Brahms's sonata scores tells violinists and pianists far more than merely what pitches to play and how long to play them-if read carefully, these scores reveal an immense amount of expression, both of musical and human essences. Joel Lester's Brahms's Violin Sonatas magnifies key passages from these scores, revealing in clear and accessible language how the composer built his themes and musical narratives and how, ultimately, Brahms's music came to sound Brahmsian. Through close readings and annotated musical examples, Brahms's Violin Sonatas guides practitioners to read scores with care and to develop their own informed interpretation of the pieces, eschewing the notion of a single "correct" interpretation of the historical score. By exploring not only the sonatas' musical elements, but also their relationship to important events in the composer's life, Lester shows how subtle components can communicate the gestures, moods, personalities, and emotions that make Brahms's music so compelling. A companion volume to the author's award-winning 1999 study Bach's Works for Solo Violin: Style, Structure, and Performance (OUP), Brahms's Violin Sonatas is a clear and practical guide to understanding and performing Brahms's music in the present.

J. S. Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin have been central to the violin repertoire since the mid-eighteenth century. This engaging volume is the first comprehensive exploration of the place of these works within Bach's music: it focuses on their structural and stylistic features as they have been perceived since their creation. Joel Lester, a highly regarded scholar, teacher, violinist, and administrator, combines an analytical study, a full historical guide, and an insightful introduction to Bach's style. Individual movements are related to comparable movements by Bach in other media and are differentiated from superficially similar works from later eras.

Lester employs descriptions of historical and contemporary recordings, as well as accounts of nineteenth-century performances and commentaries on historical editions, to explore these works as they evolved through the centuries. Wherever possible, he uses analytic tools culled from eighteenth-century ideas, key notions originally developed for the specific purpose of describing the repertoire under consideration. Beginning with an overview of the solo violin music's place within Bach's oeuvre, this study takes the Sonata No. 1 in G minor as the paradigm of Bach's compositional strategy, examining each movement in detail before enlarging the discussion to cover parallel and contrasting features of the A-minor and C-minor sonatas. Next, a chapter is devoted to the three partitas and their roots in various dance-music traditions. The book concludes with a summary of form, style, and rhetoric in Bach's music, in which Lester muses on these masterpieces with an overall command of the music, criticism, and history of the 1700s that is quite rare among scholars.

A novel and unprecedented investigation of a particular portion of Bach's accomplishment and a particular aspect of his universal appeal, Bach's Works for Solo Violin will help violinists, students, scholars, and other listeners develop a deeper personal involvement with these wonderful pieces.

This book combines a performance guide for violinists, an analytical study, an exploration of Bach's style, and an investigation of musical form and continuity. J.S. Bach's three sonatas and three partitas for solo violin have been mainstays of the violin concert repertoire since the mid-nineteenth century; their long performance history, evidenced in recordings as well as in editions, offers an opportunity to study the ways in which notions of Baroque style have evolved. Central to the book is the question what type of analysis is best applied to Bach's music: wherever possible, Lester draws his analytical tools from eighteenth-century techniques, developed for this repertoire.

This ambitious study offers a panoramic survey of musical thought in the eighteenth century and, at the same time, a close analysis of the important theoretical topics of the period. The result is the most comprehensive account ever given of the theory behind the music of late Baroque and early Classical composers from Bach to Beethoven. While giving preeminent theorists their due, Joel Lester also examines the works of over one hundred eighteenth- and seventeenth-century writers to show how prominent theories were received and applied in actual teaching situations. Beginning with the influence of Zarlino and seventeenth-century theorists, Lester goes on to focus on central traditions emerging from definitive works in the early eighteenth century: species counterpoint in the writings of Fux; thoroughbass as presented by Niedt and Heinichen; Rameau's harmonic theories and Mattheson's views on melodic structure. The author traces the development and interactions of these traditions over the remainder of the century, through the writings of Albrechtsberger, C. P. E. Bach, Kirnberger, Koch, Marpurg, Martini, Nichelmann, Riepel, and many others. This historical overview is leavened throughout with accounts of individual composers grappling with theoretical issues - Haydn's careful study of Fux's treatise, Mozart's instructions on harmony to his composition students, Beethoven's own student exercises. The links between various theoretical traditions, the pervasive influence of Rameau's harmonic thinking, and the harmonic theories of Koch are just some of the numerous topics given their first full treatment here. Many of the theorists Lester cites are either unknown or often misunderstoodtoday. By bringing their contributions to light and placing them within the context of theoretical tradition, Lester offers a fresh perspective, one that will inform and enhance any future study of this magnificent era in Western music.